As the era of Div. 1 transition comes to a close, the department of athletics took a step of sustainability for the future by signing a 10-year contract with IMG College.

“It’s a huge deal for us,” De Leon said. “Most Div. 1 athletic departments across the country outsource their sponsorship sales. For the last four months we’ve been working to find a new, what’s called a multimedia rights holder, meaning that they now have the rights to sell all of our advertising.”

IMG College is a division of IMG Worldwide, which is a global sports, fashion and media company operating in more than 30 countries. More specifically IMG college is used by more than 80 colleges and universities, which includes the likes of Baylor, Clemson, Florida State, Ohio State, Alabama, Texas and various others.

In signing this agreement, ACU forwards all its multimedia sports marketing, promotional and commercial rights available in and around its athletics program to IMG in exchange for a projected revenue double that of previous years.

“We’re extremely happy about the financial implications of this new deal,” De Leon said. “It allows us to budget more strategically because we know the amount of sponsorship revenue that is going to come in. We know for a fact for the next 10 years what our sponsorship revenue will be and that’s a huge blessing for us and allows to better budget for the future.”

The university previously partnered with Peak Sports MGMT to handle all multimedia rights and sponsorship, but the company and university parted ways in January of this year. De Leon said athletics has essentially been operating without a sponsorship sales staff for the last four months, but IMG will hire and place two employees on campus to handle those sales.

ACU also signed a deal with IMG’s seating group which will give fans an option to purchase a cushioned chair back to be placed on the aluminum benches in the stadium.

These contracts officially start July 1, 2017 and will remain through 2025-2026 athletic season.